Uncategorized Archives - Page 73 of 279

Sweatshops Won’t Save Haiti

by Tope Folarin | Mar 15, 2010

The United Nations will host a Haiti donors’ conference at the end of March.

This conference will be quite different from last year’s event, of course, coming as it does on the heels of the worst earthquake to strike Haiti in two centuries. An agenda has already begun to take shape: It’s already clear that a future Haiti must be populated with environmentally sustainable, earthquake-resistant buildings, for example, and it’s also clear that the international community must do something to ease Haiti’s massive debt burden.

Ethiopia: Licensed to Steal

by Alemayehu Mariam | Mar 11, 2010

If democracy is a government of the people, kleptocracy is a government of thieves.

Sudan’s Divorce Proceedings

by Francis Njubi Nesbitt | Mar 10, 2010

The Obama administration is grappling with a volatile diplomatic crisis in Sudan this year. With two violent conflicts on the brink of escalation, a president indicted for war crimes, and an election next month, Sudan is set to explode. The country is also preparing for a January 2011 referendum on independence for the south that will determine the fate of the country.

Postcard From…Bangkok

by Andre Vltchek | Mar 10, 2010

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra received his verdict on February 26. The Supreme Court stripped Thaksin of $1.4 billion dollars in assets from his telecommunications firm. One day later, several members of the ruling coalition declared that Thaksin Shinawatra should leave politics forever. The present government came to power in semi-democratic elections following the military coup that toppled Thaksin in 2006.

Time-Lapse Foreign Policy

by John Feffer | Mar 9, 2010

In the popular virtual game Civilization, you can build an empire and take over the world in a matter of hours. In other words, you can compress thousands of years of history into one long session in front of your computer. This is the gaming equivalent of time-lapse photography, which allows us to watch the blooming of a flower or the entire life-cycle of a caterpillar in a matter of seconds. Thanks to computer technology, Civilization gives you the illusion of experiencing and controlling epochal change.

China Lassoes its Neighbors

by Walden Bello | Mar 8, 2010

With the Doha Round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization in limbo, the heavy hitters of international trade have been engaged in a race to sew up trade agreements with smaller partners. China has been among the most aggressive in this game, a fact underlined on January 1, 2010, when the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) went into effect.

Africa: C

by Tope Folarin | Mar 5, 2010

Africans greeted Barack Obama’s presidential election with excitement and hope. Few ever imagined that a son of Africa would come to inhabit the most powerful office in the world. One year on, however, Obama’s legacy in Africa remains unclear.

Philip Morris vs. Uruguay

by Juan Antonio Montecino, Rebecca Dreyfus | Mar 4, 2010

Philip Morris International believes Uruguay is Marlboro Country. On February 19, the tobacco giant filed a lawsuit against that country, charging that new health measures involving cigarette packaging amount to unfair treatment of the company.

Choco Pies vs. Cold Noodles

by John Feffer | Mar 2, 2010

In the blockbuster 2000 film JSA, two South Korean soldiers accidentally find themselves on the North Korean side of the Joint Security Area, at the border between the two countries. They meet their North Korean counterparts. But instead of fighting, the four soldiers become friends and arrange several midnight get-togethers. At the height of their secret fraternization, one of the South Korean soldiers brings over several Choco Pies, cookies with marshmallow covered in chocolate that are wildly popular in South Korea.

Will Facebook Remake the World?

by John Feffer | Mar 2, 2010

When I traveled through Eastern Europe in the wake of the 1989 revolutions, I carried a computer and a portable printer. I typed up my dispatches, printed them out, and sent them back to my employers by air mail. Even with the lag time of a week or more, my reports on conversations with activists, academics, and politicians remained fresh. Email, after all, was still rudimentary in 1990. The World Wide Web was still three years in the future. Blogs wouldn’t debut until four years after that. Change was rapid in Eastern Europe in 1990. But for both activists and observers, the printed word still carried enormous weight.